EC's-chess,math, etc?

[bor0101]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Hey, i was wondering if med schools care about the following ec's: playing on the college team in chess tournaments; participating in a math competition(putnam). In neither one do you really excell, but obviously, you're better than most med students at these things...

I myself would guess that they do not! This is because i remember a guy from high school, who really excelled at chess. He was the captain of the high school team that won the national h.s. championship, he was a master... And it didnt help him get into any schools, he got rejected by a school for which he had higher than avg sat's and grades... And not to make it sound, like im writing about myself, he was an engineer, and so got rejected, although chess is a good indication of quantitative/analytical skills..

So i take it, for med school such things help even less🙁 if somebody sucks up better and gets better recommendations from his professors or his hospital where he volunteers, he's already in better shape than i🙁

 

[avinash]

Hey, i was wondering if med schools care about the following ec's: playing on the college team in chess tournaments; participating in a math competition(putnam). In neither one do you really excell, but obviously, you're better than most med students at these things...

I myself would guess that they do not! This is because i remember a guy from high school, who really excelled at chess. He was the captain of the high school team that won the national h.s. championship, he was a master... And it didnt help him get into any schools, he got rejected by a school for which he had higher than avg sat's and grades... And not to make it sound, like im writing about myself, he was an engineer, and so got rejected, although chess is a good indication of quantitative/analytical skills..

So i take it, for med school such things help even less🙁 if somebody sucks up better and gets better recommendations from his professors or his hospital where he volunteers, he's already in better shape than i🙁

the whole app proccess can be really random, none of the genuises on SDN have figured it out yet. As for chess and all the things hes done to excel in chess, i dont think that will be weighed on heavy at all. If your planning to follow your freind and get a whole bunch of chess awards and recogniton, i would rather spend your time doing research or shadowing or something more clinically oreinteinted. i think it would have some bearing and if you intereested i would go ahead and go and do something with chess, but dont expect any miracles out of it. Your grades, MCAT and EC are rather important, and if you can show that you really do care about medicine and you really do want to be a great doctor, then im sure that will show in your ps and all your other work. This is ust my 2 cents, im sure others will have different views

Good Luck 👍

 

[tinkerbelle]

Your ECs are fine. Everyone needs non-medical activites to keep them sane 🙂 However, med schools want to know that you understand what medicine is all about. So you need to go out and get some medically-related activites. It's not sucking up. It's finding out more about the field you want to do for the rest of your life.

And yes, awesome recs help. So if your friend gets better recs than you, then yes, he has an advantage over you. But don't assume professors and volunteer coordinators are stupid. I'm sure they see right through the "sucking-up act" 😛 For your recs, just make sure you ask people who know you well and who like you. How about getting a rec from the person in charge of your chess/math stuff?

 

[45408]

Well, ending the pity party would be a good start. Write about these things in your PS and how they apply to your development as a student/person/med school applicant.

 

[sunny123]

Don't worry about chess being a non-EC, the more the variety, the better.

 

[Kazema]

It's not going to get you in but it does make you a more interesting person - something you can talk about in an interview for example. Bonus if you can link playing chess to medicine somehow.

 

[CanIMakeIt]

Mention those ECs that you are enthusiastic about and can talk about intelligently to show that you really did them, is all that matters IMHO. If you love playing Chess, and taking part in Math comps...so be it.

Good Luck

 

[Law2Doc]

Bonus if you can link playing chess to medicine somehow.

Like perhaps playing chess with patients in a hospital or convalescent home??? You can easilly turn such a skill into a bona fide premed EC worthy of mentioning at interviews.
But I note that if you view the type of communicating with profs/PIs/employers that will net you good LORs as "sucking up" or otherwise distasteful, you will not get far in medicine. You will forever need people to know you and give you a good recomendation at every stage of this career.